As the evidence is presented sighting research after research articles to the IDSA(Infectious Diseases Society of America) Lyme Disease Review Panel, it is clear that it is overwhelmingly supporting what ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases) says. ILADS say that the blood tests are unreliable and for some patients long term antibiotics and repeat courses of antibiotics are sometimes necessary.
Much of this information and research has been available for many years and some of us suffering Chronic Lyme Disease have been aware of the overwhelming amount of research that supports ILADS and shows IDSA guidelines to be inadequate.
Our Health Agencies have chosen to ignore representations made to them over many years and instead follow blindly IDSA 2006 guidelines this has caused a World Wide medical scandal on a huge scale leaving patients to continue with chronic pain and ill health and be refused treatments that can and do help them.
It is not acceptable that the 'experts' advised our HPA in UK that IDSA guidelines were authoritative when so much evidence and research has been presented to them over many years which showed serious flaws with current NHS tests and treatment protocols.
Approximately 350,000 people in USA will have been exposed to Lyme Disease in USA whilst the IDSA has been preparing to review their Guidelines since May 2008.
In UK using HPA figures 8000 (10x confirmed tests according to Ho Yen of HPA in Scotland and CDC) new cases in the last year. Because of IDSA 2006 Guidelines these people are unlikely to have been adequately treated and may go on to suffer chronic ill health.
No one knows the impact on many other health conditions as patients are generally not assessed to see if their chronic ill health could have been caused by a tick bite (the smallest tick being the size of a poppy seed so easily missed) possibly many years earlier.
The full presentations are available on IDSA website
http://www.idsociety.org/Content.aspx?id=15026 where the video presentation is also available.